September 03, 2009

Consider the metaphor of leading an organizational change as sailing a yacht:

Imagine that you want to sail a yacht to a new destination. You must read the wind well so that you can trim the sails to harness its energy. If the winds are at your back, then you can put up the spinnaker and make quick progress to your destination.

However, if the winds are blowing against the direction in which you
want to travel you will need to chart and oblique course, heading
toward your destination without aiming for it directly. If you try to
confront the headwinds squarely, your sails will luff, and your yacht's
progress will stall.

In the same way, if you want to steer an organization through a major change, you must navigate the relationships among your employees so that you can harness their energy in support of the change. If the key change agents have relationships of trust, respect, and obligation with most employees, then those relationships will help you to build momentum in support of the organizational change. However, if the opponents of your change benefit from higher quality relationships with most employees, you must steer the organizational change carefully.

These are the first two paragraphs in my dissertation. (Piderit, 1999, Navigating Relationships with Coworkers: Understanding Employees' Attitudes Toward an Organizational Change, UMI #9929921)

How do you think of leading organizational change? What metaphor do you find most provocative?